Ecole Lesage...oh la la!

There is a great article about Lagerfeld, the House of Chanel and the most important ateliers that work for them (Chanel acquired these ateliers, but they let other Couture Houses like Dior use them) in the Wall Street Journal. There were two pieces of information that caught my eye. First, Lagerfeld explains the process he follows to create a collection: where his inspiration comes from, how the sketching process is done and the time frame it takes him to have a final product (shorter than I expected!). Secondly, and even more interesting to me, the article talks about the ateliers that Chanel uses to create their Haute Couture, Shoes, Hats, etc. So, without more delay, I embark in writing a small blog for each of these ateliers.

Lets begin !

ECOLE LESAGE

located in Paris, France at:

13 rue de la Grange
Batelier
75009 Paris, France
01 44 79 00 88

www.ecole-lesage-paris.com

An actual school, they have classes for enrichment purposes, as well as, for professionals. They teach the Art of Embroidery: beads, sequings, feathers, jewels, silk ribbon, among many techniques with needle and the Luneville hook.

They charge for enrichment classes 90 Euros per hour, and they have listed in their website the many choices of courses. These "amateur" lessons are in embroidery or interior design and furnishings.

Also, they have classes for the professional (embroidery (haute couture) and/or interior design and furnishings). The course for the professional is composed of 50 classes of 3 hours each at a rate of 6,279 Euros.

Following are pictures of the book they have published, the Luneville hook, and several samples of their work.

How a dressform is made

Jeanne is my new addition to my mini sewing studio (I named her after Jeanne Paquin the famous designer); she came to me via 1st price in the re-design (recycle garments) competition at the Fashion Symposium 2011. Although, Jeanne looks fabulous, I still have a emotional attachment to Maggie my first dress form (Maggie is not as fancy as Jeanne, but she is dear to my heart!).

In no time I was surfing the Internet to find out more about the history of dress forms; and, I had an interesting article on Wolf Form (US company in the East Coast) on one of my Threads Magazine issues. This company, has really high quality dress forms and they have being around since the 1900"s. They provide to designers custom made forms for their clientele and market needs.

Enjoy the video!

Momotaro Jeans - Japan's most expensive!

And more about expensive jeans...lovely loom...

$46,000.00+ for a pair of Levi's Jeans!

Forbes.com has a very interesting article on Jeans and the business of manufacturing them. I was very surprise to read that Levi Strauss & Co. bought a pair of Levi's Jeans from 1880 for the sum of $46,532.00. Well, I am sure that Levi Strauss & Co, has plenty of discretionary income to do this: according to the Forbes article just women's jeans alone in 2004 were $7.4 billion in profits, and most likely on the rise since then.

These are some of the couture and ready to wear jeans and their price tag (in US dollars):


Escada $10,000.00


APO $4,000.00


Escada $3,250.00


Dolce & Gabbana $2,995.00


Dior by John Galliano $1,700.00


Cavalli $1,440.00


Chanel $1,120.00


Stella McCartney $575.00


Gucci $460.00


Moschino $420.00

The swatch thief...

Creating a library of swatches is a pastime that I have. You can find free templates in the Internet to classified your swatches and write all pertinent information; there are some on-line stores that will provide free swatches (as many as you like) or swatches for a low fee. One of such on-line store is www.fabrics-store.com, they specialize in Linen, Linen/Cotton, Cotton (Jacquards, canvas, printed weaves); the prices are the best I have found so far and the quality is superb. This fabric store sends free swatches and they organize them for you in a very neat way: small swatch cards (5 swatches per card) and behind the swatches, they print the name of the fabric, fiber content with number of waft and weft yarns!, and catalog number. Super cool store!

So back to the main story, last weekend I went downtown L.A. to get swatches for my project, and also, look for the new trends within the textile world. As usual, I went over my parking limit and end up paying a bit more than expected. In any event, I was pleased with my new swatches and fabric purchases. I came home and settle my fabric and swatches in my "sewing area", then I went about doing other chores.

The following morning "Bigotes"- my tuxedo cat- jumped into my bed and she had something fuzzy in her mouth...I pull out of her mouth one of my swatches! I went to check the stash of swatches and found that they were all scattered around the house....aaaagggh...I spent hours trying to find the little pieces of fabric: Bigotes hide most of them and to this day I have some pieces missing!

So, Cat lovers, be aware of your little kitties: they not only love to chew on your paper patterns, mess up your yarn balls, eat the thread, climb dress forms until they look like they had chicken pox, play with pins; but also, become a swatch thief...:0.

This is the photo of "Bigotes the Swatch Thief":

Not so new heights....

From the fashion runway shows to Lady Gaga's act, you can see the craze of super high platform shoes!

This is not a new phenomenon; platform shoes have been worn for thousands of years: from the Grecian actors to this day. Adding height to someone, by means of a shoe, was an important feature of the upper classes. This trend was important for women as well as men; in the Chinese culture, men would wear boots with added height (very similar to the boots used to this day by the Chinese Opera performers). Another good example are the "chopines" used in Venice by the ladies and courtesans to prevent mud getting on their garments (these chopines are the "mother of all platforms", they had to use sticks or servants to help themselves and walk around).




Of course, we have the "Scandinavian style clog-platforms" very popular in the 70's (I loved my clogs: white with black polka dots); the Disco Era with their styles of platforms and all the glam-rockers that wore the most outrageous outfits and shoes (I was a fan of Kiss and Sir Elton John). And now, we are still using these shoes (well...not me...I have become a "flat shoe" fan after my doses of platform shoes) :)...

About "Pattern Magic"

During Winter Break a group of instructors and classmates got together to do a "Japanese Pattern making" using the book "Pattern Magic, Vol. 1 and 2" by T. Nakamichi. The first step was to get the volume 1 book; this took a very long time since the book was out of print: in my case I had to buy one used copy from a bookstore in New York, and it took over a month to arrive! (I think they sent it via "burro" mail).

The second step was to create the bodice block according to the instructions of T. Nakamichi. OMG! it was really a mysterious magic to produce...the book is in metric system which is really easy for me since I was raised and educated with it; but, the instructions are incomplete and confusing. It took a good 4 hours to create the Japanese bodice block; me and Mr. M. (my classmate) end up very tired and frustrated. When we meet the rest of the patter makers to share our blocks, we all realized that the book uses a dress form that is not the same as our size 8 PGMs or American dress forms. The "Bunka" style dress form of the book, is very "flat" on the front, the side seams are about 1.5" moved towards the Center Back, and the waist line was about 2" higher than the usual PGM dress form.

Anyway, we went ahead and started producing the different styles of bodices. I particularly liked the neck and collar treatments; Mrs. L loved the "black hole" dress and the twisted knit top. Mrs. C worked on the "Bamboo" bodice and created a skirt for it (she needed to move the side seams to match our dress forms); Mr. E and Mrs. S where interested in the "pop up cubes"; and, Mrs. S made a cool pattern for it (zillions of little pieces, aggggh!). And in my case, I worked the "bow" bodice with an OK overall success.

Volume 2 of the series was not even discuss since we all found that the instructions were not clear. This is a book series that works wonders for ideas; but in my opinion, not great for learning pattern making.